


Safe Adventures

by sahiya



Series: The Countess and the Doctor [7]
Category: Doctor Who, Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Cordelia is so Betan, F/M, Humor, Sex Education
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 12:50:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/913421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sex education for twenty-first century teenagers, Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan style.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe Adventures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [via_ostiense](https://archiveofourown.org/users/via_ostiense/gifts).



> If this one seems a bit weird structurally (and also longer), it's because the first part was actually written for a [timestamp meme](http://sahiya.dreamwidth.org/693404.html) I recently did. But the second part (which was written for the fundraiser) doesn't make much sense without it. 
> 
> Thanks to Fuzzyboo for beta reading!

It was harder to come up with eleven “perfectly safe” adventures than the Doctor had thought it would be. After all, the whole point of adventures was that they weren’t safe. But Cordelia had been clear that there was to be absolutely no running for their lives until Amelia’s legs were long enough for her to keep up, so he wracked his brain and eventually came up with eleven adventures Amelia would love and Cordelia would approve. 

There were amusement parks and beaches and frozen moons and watching from the safety of the TARDIS as stars went supernova. They went back in time and saw dinosaurs (from a distance) and went to eat at the most interesting restaurants in the galaxy. And it all went swimmingly, until they picked up Amelia on her sixteenth birthday and she wasn’t alone.

“This is Rory,” Amelia said. “He’s coming, too.”

“Wait, _what_?” the Doctor said. 

“Oh my God, Amelia,” Rory - whoever that was - said, stumbling over his feet on his way into the TARDIS. “It’s him! It’s your raggedy Doctor! You weren’t joking.” 

“Why would I joke about something like this?” Amelia replied. “This is the Doctor, and this is Cordelia.”

“Pleased to meet you, Rory,” Cordelia said, offering him her hand. 

The Doctor stood dumbfounded. “You can’t just _invite a friend_!” he told Amelia.

“Why not?” she replied. “It’s my birthday, isn’t it?”

“She has a point, Doctor,” Cordelia said. The Doctor glared at her. She was utterly straight-faced, but he could tell she was laughing at him. “It is her birthday. Where’s the harm?’

“Where’s the harm?” the Doctor repeated. “ _Where’s the harm?_ ” But it seemed like it might be too late. Amelia was showing Rory around the console room and starting to lead him upstairs into the TARDIS. “Wait just a minute!” he said. “Where do you two think you’re going?”

“Swimming pool!” Amelia called back, and the two of them disappeared. 

The Doctor turned to face Cordelia. “What’s happened to my authority?” he asked. “On my own TARDIS! Just invited him along!”

Cordelia smiled. “I think they’re sweet.”

“What do you mean?” The Doctor frowned.

“Well, did you really expect her to stay a little girl forever, Doctor? She’s sixteen, she has a boyfriend, and she wants to bring him on her birthday trip.”

The Doctor frowned harder. “You mean they’re not just - but I thought - but -”

Cordelia patted him on the arm. “It’s all right, Doctor. I’m sure she’ll still love whatever you had planned for this year’s adventure. I should probably have a talk with them, though,” she added thoughtfully. “Sex education in the 21st century was so terribly primitive.”

“Sex educa -” The Doctor thought he would have a stroke. “Not on my TARDIS!”

“Oh, I’d guess so,” Cordelia said, mildly. “Probably in your swimming pool right now, in fact.”

“ _What_?” the Doctor said, in utter horror. “I _use_ that swimming pool!” 

“Oh calm down,” Cordelia said. “At that age, they’ll be done in twenty minutes and we can all go for ice cream, where I intend to ask them horrifyingly Betan questions.” The Doctor put his face in his hands. “And then we can head off on our adventure, whatever it is. How does that sound?”

“Terrible,” the Doctor said into his hands. 

Cordelia laughed. He pulled his hands down from his face to glare at her. “That’s the thing about kids, Doctor,” she said, shaking her head. “No adventure in the world compares to watching them grow up. Nothing is more thrilling or terrifying, and you can’t run away from it.”

The Doctor grimaced. Clearly, there were things about this that he hadn’t thought through. And yet . . . “Do I have to be there while you ask them horrifyingly Betan questions?” he asked. 

“No.”

“Then okay.” The Doctor pulled a lever on the TARDIS console. “Ice cream it is!”

***

It had always been Cordelia’s opinion that sex education on Barrayar was criminally bad. Boys and girls were generally given completely different information, some of which was flat-out inaccurate, there was no practical element except what kids got up to on their own, and forget any talk about why people would want to do it at all. “Pleasure” was a dirty word. A huge part of why she’d sent Miles off to Beta Colony at fifteen (and why she continued to pay for bright, young Barrayaran women to go) was so that he could get _proper_ sex ed. 

Then she started traveling with the Doctor and realized that actually, Barrayar was probably middle-of-the-pack in terms of sex ed. Maybe even well above the fiftieth percentile. There were some places that were better, but others that were much, much worse, and a lot of those places were in the twenty-first century. And everywhere they went, it was the women who suffered most for the non-existent or entirely inaccurate information. It was the women who ended up pregnant and abandoned, or assaulted, or emotionally scarred, or who just had _really bad sex_ , because no one had ever taught them how to have good sex. So really, Cordelia decided, she was just going to have to be cruel to be kind. 

But because she wasn’t a sadist, she waited until the Doctor had disappeared with his ice cream and a vaguely mumbled excuse. “So,” Cordelia said brightly. She looked at Amelia and Rory across the black and white checkered table of the ice cream parlor and smiled. “How long have you two been having sex?”

Rory choked on his ice cream cone. Amelia blushed bright red to the roots of her hair. “Cordelia!” she hissed. _You’re embarrassing me_ went unspoken, but Cordelia had been a mother for over thirty-five years and heard it anyway. 

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you to stop,” Cordelia said, keeping her tone even and matter-of-fact. “You’re both sixteen, aren’t you? That’s over the age of consent on my homeworld and where you're from as well, if I'm not mistaken. And even if I did want to stop you, I don’t believe it’d have much effect. So,” Cordelia gave them her brightest and most Betan smile. “How long has it been?”

The two of them exchanged horrified glances. Finally, Amelia turned back and said, mostly to the table, “Wehaven’tyet.”

Cordelia raised her eyebrows. “Why not?" She hoped they hadn't gotten it in their heads to wait until marriage. Nothing baffled her quite as much as the idea of waiting until what was, in the end, a fairly arbitrary moment of societal approval. As far as Cordelia had seen, waiting for marriage mostly resulted in people getting married very young. At least, that was its main result on Barrayar. In the days before reliable contraception, she supposed it had made some sense, but even in Amelia and Rory's time, the problems far outweighed any possible advantages.

Amelia turned, if it was possible, even redder. “It’s just . . . we just haven’t yet.” She swallowed. “That was actually part of why I wanted Rory to come along. My aunt won’t let us be in the same room with the door shut, and Rory’s parents are the same way, and I don’t - I’m too bloody _tall_ for my first time to be in the back of a car!”

Cordelia nodded. “Very sensible.” She glanced at Rory and saw that he looked completely gobsmacked. Clearly, Amelia hadn’t let him in on this plan. “Okay, then. What do you know about sex?”

The two of them blinked. “What is there to know?” Rory asked. “I mean, I know how it works.”

“Can you name the parts of the female anatomy that are principally associated with sexual pleasure?”

“I -” Rory gaped. “What?”

 _Oh dear_. Cordelia hid her wince. “What sort of contraception do the two of you plan to use?”

“I’m on the pill,” Amelia said promptly. “I went and got the prescription two months ago from a clinic in the next town, and I’ve been taking it since then.”

“Excellent,” Cordelia said. “Though I’m sure we could find you something less inconvenient and more effective than pills in the TARDIS medbay.” She glanced at her chrono. “Come on, then. We’re supposed to meet the Doctor back at the TARDIS in ten minutes.”

Amelia stood up from the table and followed Cordelia out of the ice cream parlor, ice cream in one hand and Rory’s hand in the other. “So, what happens now?” she asked. “Are you going to cover for us so we can - you know?”

“I’m not _covering_ for anyone,” Cordelia said. “I don’t think there’s anything to cover up, for one thing. And I won’t stop you if you want to have sex now. But quite honestly, I think you both could stand to do a little research first.”

They were trailing behind her, and so Cordelia couldn’t see the looks she was sure they exchanged during the pause that ensued. Finally, Amelia said, “Um, what kind of research?”

“Yeah,” Rory said. “I mean, sex is just sex, isn’t it? People have it all the time. It can’t be that difficult.”

Cordelia stopped and turned to face them. “Listen up, kiddos,” she said. “I’m going to tell you something none of the adults in your life probably ever have. Sex is a skill. People can be good at it or bad at it, and being good at it requires both some familiarity with the theory as well as a significant amount of practice.” On Beta, she’d have scheduled an appointment for them with a Licensed Practical Sexual Therapist, but that probably was not an option. She could only imagine the ten different shades of red the Doctor would blush if she suggested it to him.

Cordelia let that sink in. When neither Rory or Amelia said anything, she looked at Rory. “You’re right that people have sex all the time. But there’s a lot of _bad_ sex in the world - yours and every other - and some of it isn’t just bad, it’s dangerous to people’s physical and mental health. Do you both understand me?”

The two of them nodded. They looked a lot more daunted than they had. Cordelia felt a little bad about that, but not as bad as she would’ve if she’d said nothing and had to comfort Amelia afterward. “So. You can choose to have sex now. That’s your prerogative. But I’d rather that you both did some reading and had the chance to ask me any questions you might have beforehand - and that you had the chance to talk _to each other_ about it as well.”

“Oh,” Amelia said. She glanced at Rory. “I guess . . . that sounds like a good idea.” He nodded. Pleased, Cordelia turned to lead the way back to the TARDIS.

Cordelia didn’t know where the Doctor had escaped to, but he wasn’t in the console room when they arrived. Briskly, Cordelia headed for the library, where she found exactly what she wanted: two copies of the standard Betan human sexuality textbook stacked on an end table. Of course, on Beta they’d never have been available on actual _paper_ , but Cordelia didn’t question that sort of thing. 

“Here you go,” she said with another bright, Betan smile, handing one to Rory and one to Amelia. “Enjoy. Let me know if you have any questions. And talk to each other, all right?” She did not add, as she had to Miles, that if you couldn’t talk about sticking body parts into each other, then you probably had no business doing it. She thought that might be a bridge too far with these two.

The Doctor was in the console room, fussing around with something that probably didn’t need fussing, when she came back. “Well?” he said.

“Mission accomplished,” she said. “Horrifyingly Betan questions asked and answered.”

“Good,” he said, clearly relieved. “And, uh, where are they?”

“In the library. I gave them some homework.”

He blinked, not unlike Rory had. “Homework? About sex?” 

“Yes, precisely. And I have a request,” she added, “for our next destination.” 

The Doctor frowned. “Cordelia, I hope you’re not going to ask me to take them to Orb.”

“Good heavens, no.” The Orb of Unearthly Delights was _not_ for beginners. “Though I do think they could use a visit to a nice, experienced LPST - but I realize that’s probably not on the table either,” she added hastily, when his eyebrows shot up. “So how about skiing?”

His brows lowered. “Skiing?”

“Skiing,” she said. “I’ve never been, and I bet Amelia hasn’t either. Nice, normal holiday at a resort. I think that qualifies as a safe adventure, don’t you?”

“I suppose,” the Doctor said, frowning at her. “What’s the catch?”

Cordelia smiled. “Separate rooms, Doctor. For them and for us.” This time, he didn’t just frown - he _scowled_. Cordelia bit her lip to keep from smiling. “She’s not your little girl anymore. I’m giving them what they need to do this safely. But if you force them to hide it - well, they’ll run off in a spaceship to do it anyway.”

The Doctor opened his mouth, then shut it firmly. “I see. Skiing?”

“Yes,” Cordelia said firmly, and patted him on the arm. “Choose a place with nice beds. Amelia will thank you.”

_Fin._


End file.
